


at the far end of the telescope

by sublime_jumbles



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Therapy, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, chubby!raleigh, comfort/binge eating, don't talk to me about the timeline of this crossover, implied suicidal thoughts, it's a mess, therapist!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-02-05 23:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1835890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sublime_jumbles/pseuds/sublime_jumbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He thumbs through the wad of business cards in the junk drawer in his tiny kitchen, looking for the one for the pizza place that has twelve out of thirteen punches on it, but his gaze catches another card, deep purple with crisp white lettering: </i>Sam Wilson, Trauma Counselor,<i> his email and phone number printed below, and he could kick himself, it’s such an obvious solution.</i></p><p>(there's also this <a href="http://how-delightfully-utter.tumblr.com/post/89176445696/new-headcanon-with-veinsfullofpoeticalstuff">headcanon</a> between me and <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/youwilllovemylaugh/pseuds/youwilllovemylaugh">youwilllovemylaugh</a> that isn't referenced in here but it's something you should know anyway)</p>
            </blockquote>





	at the far end of the telescope

**Author's Note:**

> in the clusterfuck that is the ptsd!Raleigh and therapist!Sam timeline, this falls a little bit after [fill you up, calm you down](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1762129). group therapy is still happening once or twice a week, and Raleigh's getting a little better at reaching out and asking for help. he's a little less raw now, but not much less of a recluse. 
> 
> will there be more from this universe? we just don't know.

Raleigh falls asleep with the TV on and a belly full of Indian takeout from the place down the street that delivers. He doesn’t sleep soundly, rarely does, but whatever modicum of restfulness he achieves is destroyed when his eyes flicker open around noon the next day and register the monster wading through the bay on his TV screen.

On instinct, he leaps up, or he tries to. He’s tangled in blankets, and at least two takeout containers clatter to the floor as he struggles to free himself. He keeps his eyes trained on the television, waiting for a ticker to announce its location, only half-aware that he’s in his PPDC-sponsored apartment in D.C. and not on base in Anchorage.

The announcement doesn’t come. His eyes focus. The action onscreen is in black and white. There is no ticker, no anchor, he realizes, because he is watching _Godzilla_.

He throws himself back onto the couch, heart pounding, angry at himself for the mistake. As he reaches for the blankets, his hands begin to shake. His brain spits out Tendo’s briefing on Knifehead, _category three, biggest one yet_ , and his breathing staccatos as he feels himself begin to unspool.

He hasn’t mastered the skill of handling panic attacks yet, though he thinks he should at least be better at it, considering how many he’s endured. So he buries himself in the blankets and pillows on the couch and curls into himself, letting the gasps and sobs and whimpers wrack his frame as the terror takes hold of him. 

_You’re okay_ , he tries to tell himself through the flashbacks blooming up around his eyes. _You’re not in danger, you’ll be okay_ , but it doesn’t help him catch his breath any faster, no matter how much his therapists have told him it will. 

What helps, without fail, is food. It helps to smother the aftereffects of the panic with something, and he doesn’t trust himself with booze or his prescribed Xanax just yet, not even the antidepressants his old shrink in Alaska suggested. But ice cream, pizza, cheeseburgers, pasta – those drown out the anxiety without making him feel like he’s losing control. The habit is evident on his frame – his once-taut stomach spills over the waistband of his pants, swollen and stretch-marked and soft; his thighs are chunkier too, and a hint of pudge has crept up under his chin – but he doesn’t mind it most of the time. He’s become familiar with it, grabbing it and squishing it in the mirror before he gets in the shower, learning its weight in his hands. It keeps him from fitting into most of his pants, but that’s okay too – he lives in worn tees and hoodies and sweats and the one pair of military-issue utility pants he can still button. This is the one way he knows how to keep himself sane, and six days out of seven he’s grateful for it.

He stands up unsteadily, lungs still heaving, and makes his way into the kitchen, gets the ice cream from the freezer. He’s taken to buying his groceries in bulk, to minimize the occasions on which he has to leave his apartment: D.C. is too loud for him, too bright for this time of year. The Alaskan winter is much darker than this, and it feels wrong to have so many hours of daylight when it’s so chilly outside, but the weather hasn’t stopped him from making short work of half of the gallon container of vanilla bean. He grabs a spoon and takes the rest back to the couch, changes the channel from _Godzilla_ , hand still shaking around the remote.

He doesn’t mean to eat all of it, just enough to calm his nerves, but Raleigh’s willpower has never been very strong. The more he eats, the more grounded he feels; the more grounded he feels, the less likely he is to get swept away by a wave of panic. 

When he starts to feel uncomfortably full, he resolves to put the carton away – except he looks down to find that there are only a few spoonsful left, and the weight in his stomach seems to double. He wonders if it’ll always be like this, letting panic attacks about old movies incapacitate him for the entire day, and he pictures the rest of his life the way it seems to be heading: some dark apartment or other, shades drawn, TV muttering dully, sleeping on the couch because after so many years his bed still feels too soft, still hating himself, still eating his panic away, living like he’s half-asleep. He sees it like it’s at the far end of a telescope, like some pitiful prize for making it that far without giving in and offing himself. He pinches the skin on the back of his hand, trying to shake the image from his mind, but he gets trapped in it, his brain tossing up sad headlines about the remaining Jaeger pilots and telling him how _fucking pathetic_ it is that he burned out at twenty-two and never made any effort to get his life back on track.

He shovels the remaining ice cream into his mouth, swallows, breathes, slow and ragged. His stomach is starting to ache, but his head is still spinning out maudlin scenarios like a broken record – it’s a fucking cliché, he thinks, _but you know what, so am I_ – and as he hauls himself off the couch he wonders, helplessly, if the cycle ever ends. 

He thumbs through the wad of business cards in the junk drawer in his tiny kitchen, looking for the one for the pizza place that has twelve out of thirteen punches on it, but his gaze catches another card, deep purple with crisp white lettering: _Sam Wilson, Trauma Counselor_ , his email and phone number printed below, and he could kick himself, it’s such an obvious solution. 

Raleigh flops back onto the couch, dials. 

“Hey,” he says softly, when Sam picks up. “It’s Raleigh.”

“Raleigh!” says Sam, too loud, too jovial. “What’s going on, man? Everything okay?”

“I, uh,” says Raleigh, elbowing the couch pillows into place and easing back against them. He’s starting to hit his wall, his stomach feeling stretched tight as a drumhead. It makes a dissatisfied noise, and a quiet _oof_ slips out of his mouth. “I did something kind of bad.”

“How bad?”

“Half-gallon of ice cream bad,” he says, closing his eyes. A cramp pulls tight in his belly, and he swallows a groan. “I was going to order pizza, too, but I found your card, and it kind of … shook me out of it.”

“Well, good for you,” says Sam, sounding pleased. “Proud of you, man. You want to talk?”

Raleigh balks. Discussing his issues over the phone reminds him of the suicide hotline – which he only called once, and is trying to forget about – and it makes him uncomfortable, uneasy.

“I do house calls,” Sam offers.

“That would be better,” says Raleigh, massaging the curve of his belly. He stifles a burp, then gives Sam the address. “Key’s under the mat, in case I can’t get up by the time you get here.”

“Oh, no,” says Sam. “You’ve gotta be able to get up and answer the door, or I’m not coming in. You’re doing well, man, don’t ruin it between now and the time I get there.”

“I won’t,” says Raleigh, stomach gurgling. As full as he is, there’s something still gnawing inside him, opening the pit in his stomach, begging him to stuff the widening void with food until he can’t feel anything else. But he’s already got Sam on the phone, and he can’t very well have a pizza delivered while his therapist is sitting in his living room, so he adds, “Promise,” so he’ll hold himself to it.

“Good. I’ll be there in ten,” says Sam. “Get comfortable, because I’m gonna be staying a while.”

“Not going anywhere,” he assures Sam, exhaling heavily. “See you in a few.”

True to his word, Sam shows up within ten minutes, bearing a handful of DVDs and a box of peppermint-ginger teabags, which he sets on the coffee table. Raleigh sinks back onto the couch and winces, pressing a hand to his abdomen.

“How’s your stomach?” asks Sam, opening the box of teabags. 

Raleigh shrugs. “Hurts,” he says, grunting as he shifts against the pillows. “’M pretty full.” 

“This’ll help,” says Sam, shaking a tea bag. “Eases the bloating.”

“You just keep that on hand?” Raleigh asks, reaching for the pile of DVDs to inspect the choices: _Independence Day, Die Hard, Ghostbusters_. 

“Yep,” says Sam. “You’re not the only vet who copes this way.” He pokes his head into Raleigh’s kitchen. “Where do you keep your mugs?”

Raleigh belches, excuses himself. “Cabinet above the sink.”

He picks at the scars on his left forearm, where the neural feed scorched through his nerves, tracking down his skin like roads on a map. He scratches at the dead ends; there aren’t any scabs, it’s all smooth and shiny like a tattoo, but his blunt nails have left raw loose ends of dead skin from trying to find something to grab onto.

Sam fills a mug, puts it in the microwave. “I can see you,” he says from the kitchen doorframe. “Stop picking.”

Raleigh balls his fists until his nails bite into his palms. The hurt pushes back the hunger, he knows that, but hurting is dangerous. Hurting got him a suicide hotline and the pair of scars on his forearm that he doesn’t talk about.

“Sit on them,” Sam suggests. “Or I’m gonna get you a pair of damn mittens.”

He shoves his hands beneath his ass, feeling oddly exposed without his arms bent over his stomach. He studies its swell beneath his T-shirt as the microwave hums, Sam’s gaze weighing on him. He doesn’t keep a scale around, but he guesses he’s put on at least thirty pounds since he got discharged after Knifehead. Maybe thirty-five. He feels like he’s probably better off not knowing.

The microwave beeps, and he startles. He exhales deeply, stomach hitching a little, and closes his eyes.

“Okay there?” Sam asks, putting the mug on the coffee table, within easy reach. Raleigh watches him stretch, then sink into the armchair to the right of the couch. Sam is athletic, muscular, runs every morning. Raleigh can’t remember the last time he worked out, did anything more physical than walk to the grocery store. Sam’s good about not making him feel bad about it, but Raleigh isn’t, on his bad days. He can beat himself up about it for hours without any intention of getting out of bed or off the couch – not for getting out of shape, but for his lack of willpower, his general uselessness. It’s one thing to be okay with his body when he’s alone, but it’s another ball game when he’s sitting next to Sam. Sam’s gone through a lot, too, but he’s got his life together; he’s not wasting his life in front of the TV and eating his weight in comfort food.

Raleigh shrugs, sighs. “I’ll be all right.”

Sam nods. “You wanna talk about it?”

“It’s stupid,” Raleigh mumbles. A slow flush of embarrassment rolls over him, and he doesn’t meet Sam’s eyes as he tells him about waking up and mistaking _Godzilla_ for a kaiju attack. He tells him that he didn’t _mean_ to binge, and Sam nods in understanding. 

“I panicked,” he says, pulling his hands out from underneath him to toy with the drawstrings of his sweatpants. “I’ve told you before, it’s like – it’s like tunnel vision, when the flashbacks start. I don’t _want_ to end up this way for the rest of my life, and I’m trying to stop, but – sometimes it feels like it’s that or hurt myself, you know? And I don’t want to do that.”

“I know,” says Sam gently. “And you’re doing the right thing when you decide not to hurt yourself. But –”

“But this is hurting myself too,” Raleigh says dully. “I know.”

“Yep,” says Sam. “But you can get past it.”

“What if I can’t?” asks Raleigh, sitting up with a little difficulty. He grunts, reaches for the mug of tea. “What if I never get over this? I’ve been seeing you for, what – four months now? And I still … this is still happening, Sam.”

“Habits are hard to break.”

“I never used to eat like this, though,” says Raleigh, sipping the tea. It’s still a little too hot, but it feels nice as it pools in his belly. “This only started after Yancy died.”

“You’d never lost someone close to you before, had you?” Sam asks.

“I had, though. That’s the thing,” Raleigh says, taking another swallow of tea. “Our mom, she died when we were teenagers, and that was rough, you know? But it never even occurred to me to deal with it with food.”

“How did you deal with it?”

He scuffs out a laugh. “Physical activity. Working out, pickup games around the neighborhood. Sometimes Yance and I would spar. He was pretty good about keeping me out of fights, but I’d go find them, sometimes. As long as I was burning energy, I felt better. I’d wear myself out, sleep it off, wake up feeling a little less awful. I don’t even have the energy to go outside most days, now.” He sighs, sipping his tea. A whine curls up from his stomach, and he presses a hand to his abdomen like that will quiet it. 

“This is good,” he says, nodding at the mug, and Sam smiles.

“I know,” he says. “Keep the box, in case you need it. It’s good for tricking your stomach into thinking it’s got something in it.”

“Good to know,” says Raleigh, shifting as his stomach cramps again. “It’s kind of disgusting to think that I could still fit a pizza in there, you know? Probably wouldn’t be able to move afterward, but I could still do it.” He hefts his belly a little, gently. “God, there’s so _much_ of it.”

“How do you feel about it today?” Sam asks, and Raleigh shrugs.

“Okay. A little embarrassed, I guess, because part of me thinks I should be in better shape than this. But the other part of me thinks I’m definitely over the weight requirement for the PPDC by now, and that … I feel good about that.”

Sam nods. “Want to explain that for me?”

“Weight limit’s two hundred for someone my height,” says Raleigh, hiccuping a little as a swallow of tea goes down wrong. “When I was discharged I was one eighty-five, one ninety. Still had all my muscle,” he says, with a wry smile. “I haven’t weighed myself since then, but this has to be at least twenty pounds. Probably more. Too much to work off to get back in a Jaeger on short notice.” He massages the side of his belly, squeezes a little where it pushes over the waistband of his sweatpants. “Keeps me from hurting anyone else that way.” 

“You don’t have to get back in a Jaeger if you don’t feel comfortable with it,” Sam reminds him. “No one can force you back into the service.”

“I know. But it’s nice to have an excuse,” he says, stretching his arms above his head. His T-shirt rides up on his belly, and he tugs it back down before Sam can get a good look at the pale, doughy flesh and the rosy stretch marks decorating it. Being mostly at peace with his gut doesn’t necessarily mean being okay with Sam seeing it all hang out.

Sam nods again. “I have a question for you,” he says. “I’m not going to judge you by your answer, but I want you to be honest.”

Raleigh takes the last gulp of tea, burps gently. “Yeah?”

“Did you put yourself in a food coma to sleep last night?” Sam asks, and Raleigh remembers, abruptly, the Indian takeout containers he knocked over earlier and neglected to pick up. He winces, thinking of how that must have looked when Sam came in.

“No,” says Raleigh. “I promise. I’ve been really good about that the past couple of weeks. I ordered enough for dinner and fell asleep watching TV. And then when I woke up – I was too out of it to clean up.”

“Okay,” says Sam. “Just wanted to be sure you weren’t backsliding.” 

Raleigh snorts. “Maybe not last night, but I got pretty far today before I called you.”

“But you _did_ call me,” Sam points out. “You had a rough time, but you called me.”

“Not before I’d eaten a half-gallon of ice cream.”

“No,” says Sam, “but no matter how much you ate, you stopped yourself and you reached out, and I’m proud of you for that. Don’t beat yourself up for slipping. Everybody slips. Everybody falls down now and then. But praise yourself for making even a little bit of progress, man. That’s what keeps you going.” 

“Guess so,” says Raleigh, putting his mug back on the coffee table. “And I don’t feel like stuffing myself to the point of oblivion anymore, at least for now, so I guess something’s working here.”

“Exactly,” says Sam. “It’s not easy, and it might take a while, but you’ll shake it. You just gotta focus on the positive. You need another cup of tea, man?”

Raleigh shakes his head, rubs his belly. “Nah, I’m gonna let this settle for a bit. But you can put a movie on or something, if you want.”

“What, you sick of talking to me?” Sam jokes, and Raleigh smiles, shrugs. Sam knows by now that there’s only so much interaction he can take before he starts to wear out; they established that in the first couple of sessions. Raleigh used to be able to talk for hours, used to delight in entertaining people, but he’s spent so much time on his own recently that he’s lost the ability somewhere inside himself.

Sam gestures to the DVDs on the coffee table. “Your pick,” he says, and Raleigh chooses _Ghostbusters_ because it was one of Yancy’s favorites, and it comforts him that it’s probably one of Sam’s too. 

He tugs one of the blankets on the couch over himself, stomach grumbling softly, and watches lazily as Sam gets the DVD player running. He feels warm, grateful, and something else that he can’t quite place, at least not until Sam flops back into the armchair and shoots him a reassuring grin.

 _Safe_ , he realizes. That’s the word for how he's feeling.


End file.
